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Expanding Political Space

This guide was developed to assist CBOs to organise effectively in order to facilitate social change in their communities. It draws on the experiences and practices of the South African shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) and examines a number of topics: what is a community organisation, principles of community organisation, establishing a CBO, community meetings, protests and gatherings, education programmes, sustaining a CBO, managing and sharing information, and networking and partnerships. This guide is one of the resources in the Dear Mandela Toolkit, aimed at informing individuals, communities and CBOs of their rights.

This research report examines the week-long protest in Thembelihle, near Lenasia, Johannesburg which took place in September 2011. Frustrated by an unaccountable and unresponsive local government that frequently disregarded the community’s on-going demands for access to adequate basic services, Thembelihle residents took to the streets. Their demands, however, were dismissed by local and provincial government and met with a forceful police clamp-down. In the aftermath of the protest, arrest and criminal prosecution (often on frivolous charges) was used to harass and intimidate community members and to target community leaders, marking an alarming trend in which the criminal justice system is used by the government to suppress popular dissent. This highlights the growing trend of state repression of popular protests in poor urban areas and details how the state employs the criminal justice system to vilify, criminalise and suppress local communities advocating for socio-economic development. This report was written by Michael Clark. >>Read the full report (including an executive summary) here.

This paper was prepared for The Justice and Development Working Paper Series. It examines the role of paralegals in providing a crucial link to justice services and legal redress in South Africa, particularly for the rural poor. The paper begins with a historical overview of paralegal services in South Africa from the apartheid period to the present. The study then maps the current state of the paralegal sector, and provides detailed information on the structure and function of key organizations that provide paralegal services. Through an analysis of twelve case studies of paralegal-assisted cases, the report identifies facilitating and hindering determinants of community advice office (CAO) functions at both the institutional and organization level. This working paper was written by Jackie Dugard and Kay Drage.

Kate Tissington (2012) "'Tacticians in the Struggle for Change’? Exploring the Dynamics between Legal Organisations and Social Movements Engaged in Rights-Based Struggles in South Africa" in Marcelle Dawson and Luke Sinwell (eds) Contesting Transformation: Popular Resistance in Twenty-First Century South Africa (London: Pluto Press).